This invention relates generally to the textile industry, and more specifically, to the machinery used in the production of textile yarns. Textile spinning machines have long been used in the production of textile yarns, and various improvements have been added to the basic unit to obtain increases in efficiency. Included in these important developments are traveling units which simultaneously clean the machines, monitor yarn production, detect broken yarns and automatically accomplish interruption of the supply strand when a broken yarn is detected. Examples of devices of this type are shown and described in commonly owned U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,523,413, 3,659,409, 3,726,072, 3,841,076, 4,112,665, 4,263,776.
Various devices have been used in these prior systems to effect the interruption of the supply strand feeding to the drafting systems of textile yarn spinning machines. Any reader interested in disclosures of suitable supply strand interruption devices is referred, by way of example only, to a number of commonly owned prior patents: U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,832,839 to McClure, 3,841,076 to Ford et al, 4,000,603 to Lee and 4,326,371 to Soar.
Those familiar with the art will be cognizant of the great variety of spinning machines in use throughout the industry. It has heretofore been the practice to mount the strand interrupting apparatus to the "roll stand" portion of the drafting unit. Because of the variation in arrangement of the drafting units on various textile spinning machines, it has been necessary to custom design and manufacture a special mounting arrangement for the strand interrupting apparatus for each different drafting unit configuration.